In the process of writing and re-writing “Ford’s Fortune,” we reached a point where we needed to trim things down. The second half of the story sprawls out into crazytown… but the first half needs a Casino Royale-style card game to set the stakes and give Time Cheetah a chance to shine. Problem—the card game itself was a few beats too long, but cutting it down any further would give us no room to show all the elements we wanted to include (players, cards, reveals, reversals).

My brother and I were sorta stuck on it for a while… until we gave it some extra thought and realized we had been missing the forest for the trees: what we needed to keep weren’t the events of a card game—it was the drama! In which case, we just had the game move at an absurdly fast pace, even if it made no sense. After all, drinking freely and with these ridiculous personalities around him, Time Cheetah would definitely up the ante soon as he could.

There’s more to the scene than today’s Time Cheetah page, not gonna spoil what happens next, but I will say: the payoff to Leland’s rash move is almost instantaneous!